Long-time unitholders of HPH Trust will be familiar with the poor share price performance.
HPH Trust, backed by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s flagship entity Hutchison Whampoa, was listed with much hype in March 2011 at US$1.01.
With nearly US$6 billion raised, HPH Trust was one of the largest Singapore Exchange IPOs.
HPH Trust, despite having the backing of other institutional shareholders such as Singapore’s Temasek Holdings-owned port operator PSA International, never went above the IPO price.
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Throughout the years, there was a steady stream of earnings letdowns caused by factors ranging from workers’ strikes to unfavourable new business policies in either China or Hong Kong. Finance costs also remained a constant bugbear.
The current US-China trade war is is just the latest blow.
With its structure as a business trust, HPH Trust’s draw for investors is its distribution.
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Again, that has not met expectations. The highest payout was 51.24 HK cents in FY2012.
In line with lower earnings, HPH Trust will be paying a distribution per unit of just 17 HK cents for FY2018, down from 20.6 HK cents in FY2017.
So what did the trustee-managers have to say about the under-performance?
And what can HPH Trust unitholders look forward to?
To find out, login to read HPH Trust to improve operational efficiency to counter slowing growth due to US-China trade war or subscribe here?
